If you need to change your payment account information, please click on this link for the Exhibit C – Pre-Authorized Payment Agreement. Print and complete this form, sign it and fax it to (808) 524-6874. Please note that your broker does not have to sign this form if you are only changing your account information.

If you need to change your payment frequency, please notify us by one of the following methods:

Once your credit card is charged or your account is debited, there will be no refund.

It is Participant’s (PB, BIC or DR) responsibility to insure that all of his/her fees due and those of his affiliated associate and support subscribers are paid by the 10th day of each month or service may be interrupted to the entire office on the 11th day. If any of Participant’s associate subscribers is not able to pay for his/her fees, the Participant has the following options.

Release the agent, placing their license inactive with DCCA, and provide a copy of the release form to HIS. The agent’s signature is not required.

Loan the agent sufficient funds to pay the fees due.

Pay the fees due on behalf of the agent.

Participant is responsible for managing the roster for his/her office. Fees will continue to be billed for each of his/her affiliated subscribers until the DCCA form is received by HIS.

As always, we appreciate your cooperation. Mahalo!

NOTE: The due date for submitting DCCA change forms notifying us that you have placed your license inactive or have surrendered your license was on June 30, 2010. We cannot terminate current MLS service and billing without the DCCA change forms.

Waiver Applications/Renewals are Due Now

Do you have agents, assistants, or other staff that qualify for an MLS Waiver? Waiver applications and renewals are DUE NOW! Please read this important information about waiver applications.

Waiver Applications for the new fiscal year beginning July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011 are due Wednesday, June 30, 2010.

Waiver applications for the July 2010 to June 2011 period will automatically expire on June 30, 2010. Anyone who is currently under waiver and wants to continue accessing the MLS service under a waiver application must submit a new waiver application by June 30th of each fiscal year. This affects all licensed support subscribers, property managers and time-share agents. Waivers are also required for each partner or officer, director or shareholder who has a license, but does not engage in sales activity. Click here to obtain the Waiver Application form.

Please fax the Waiver Application forms to 1-888-628-3121. Should you have any questions, please call 1-800-628-3121, ext #454, or send an email to Accounting@HawaiiInformation.com or Deb@useresearch.com

Please note that Waiver Applications are subject to HIS Board of Directors approval.

Administrative Note

Normal Office Hours: Monday – Friday: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

In the event of emergency, you may leave a message in our emergency voice mailbox by calling the main office number and pressing * (star). Leave your message and our phone system will notify our on-call staff that there is an emergency message. Call 1-800-628-3121, if calling form the neighbor islands or 599-4224, if calling from Oahu.

We are focused on bringing back Condo as a Type. As such, considerable effort has gone into refining the Types, Subtypes and Ownership fields in order to streamline the options and ensure the integrity of the data output.

Downtime Notice

With these ongoing efforts, we’ve rescheduled the release date for these changes to Wednesday, July 7. The system will be taken offline at 8 p.m. Please mark your calendars, and be sure you have completed your work in REsearch before this time. The data conversion process will take roughly five hours, and internal testing will commence immediately to ensure REsearch is avaialable first thing in the morning.

Listing Tips

Prior to changing our system to support Condos as a type, we want to make sure that all properties are listed correctly. This will be critical for the data to be converted properly. Here is a simple overview of how listings should be entered.

There will be some anomalies, such as Stand Alone Units with no common walls attached that are considered Condos. These will need your attention after the conversion. For now, you can list these as “Residential/Lowrise/CPR-Fee Simple or CPR-Leasehold” so that they will be converted to be a “Condo” on July 7 and come up properly in Condo searches.

Also, some agents have listed their Condos as ‘Multi-Family.’ This is incorrect. Multi-Family refers to a whole building of units for sale, not individual units.

Eliminating ‘Other’

We’ve noticed that a number of Agents have used ‘OTHER’ for options. We originally included this as a catch-all, in case there was something that really didn’t fit any of the other categories. We’ve decided to drop this as an option as it has caused too much confusion. If you have anything listed as ‘OTHER,’ please change it to fit into a proper category. If you need help on this matter, please contact us.

Definitions In Review

We’d like to encourage you to check out the list of definitions provided in our online help. As it covers the many types, subtypes, and ownership options available, you may want to print it out as a quick reference guide. Many agents have found the definition list helpful in setting the most appropriate single subtype for your listing.

How You Can Help

We appreciate your support and effort to check your listings for the above issues. In addition, please forward this email to any agent that may have improperly listed their properties. The better the data we have going into a conversion, the better the data will be coming out of it.

Please mark your calendars for Wednesday, July 7. Once the system is restored, we will update you again on the next steps ahead for REsearch.

Important Billing Announcement! Please share this announcement with your fellow brokers and agents!

July Billing & Waiver Reminder

Next billing for credit card and ACH customers is Thursday, July 1, 2010. Payments by check are also due by Thursday, July 1st.

If you are placing your license INACTIVE, or if you are surrendering your license, we must receive a copy of your DCCA change form. We request that changes be submitted to us 4 to 5 business days prior to the billing date, so please send your form(s) in by Wednesday, June 23, 2010 to assure that your changes or cancellations will be processed before the billing on July 1, 2010. Once we charge your credit card or debit your account, there is no refund.

Please contact us before the billing occurs if you would like to make any changes to your billing.

It is the responsibility of the PB to insure that the fees that are due are paid by the 10th of each month or service may be interrupted to the entire office on the 11th. Each PB must be responsible for his/her own agents. If an agent is not able to pay his/her MLS fees, the PB has the following choices.

Release the agent, placing their license inactive with DCCA, and providing a copy of the release to HIS BEFORE the July 1st billing. The agent’s signature is not required.

Loan the agent sufficient funds to pay the MLS fees due.

Pay the fees due on behalf of the agent.

The PB is responsible of managing the roster for his/her office. Fees will continue to be billed until a copy of the DCCA change form is received by HIS from the PB.

As always, we appreciate your cooperation.

Waiver Applications/Renews Are Due Now!

Do you have agents, assistants, or other staff that qualify for an MLS Waiver? Waiver applications and renewals are DUE NOW! Please read this important information about waiver applications.

Waiver Applications for the new fiscal year beginning July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011 are due by June 30, 2010.

Waiver applications for the July 2010 to June 2011 period will automatically expire on June 30, 2010. Anyone who is currently under waiver and wants to continue accessing the MLS service under a waiver application must submit a new waiver application by June 30th of each fiscal year. This affects all licensed support subscribers, property managers and time-share agents. Waivers are also required for each partner or officer, director or shareholder who has a license, but does not engage in sales activity. Click here to obtain the Waiver Application form.

Administrative Note

Normal Office Hours:

Monday – Friday: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

In the event of emergency, you may leave a message in our emergency voice mailbox by calling the main office number and pressing * (star). Leave your message and our phone system will notify our on-call staff that there is an emergency message. Call 1-800-628-3121, if calling form the neighbor islands or 599-4224, if calling from Oahu.

In response to the extensive feedback from our members and users, condominiums will be restored as a “Type” versus the current “Ownership” format within REsearch by the end of June.

Although there is compelling rationale for the condominium “Ownership” model, we are responding to the significant overwhelming requests by our customers to revert to the condominium “Type” model. One of the things you should expect in an MLS is the opportunity, as an end-user, is to positively influence the direction of a service that was designed primarily to support your specific business needs and to service the needs of the greater real estate community as a whole.

The database reorganization implemented by REsearch 4.3 was many years in the making and based upon legions of suggestions by you, our customers. It was designed to be the premier MLS of today and tomorrow. There are a number of profound changes taking place at the national MLS level, and an increasing reliance on data sharing and syndication among many real estate entities. The reclassification of condos was designed to align Research with the evolving and emerging industry standards dictated by the National Associations of Realtors (NAR) which include Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) and Realtors Property Resource (RPR) which you will undoubtedly be hearing more about in the future. Differentiating condominiums as a type of ownership was designed to address a number of issues from legal concerns to supporting more detailed property information and searches.

In Hawaii, condominiums or CPRs are utilized on a far more liberal basis than anywhere else in the country from commercial condominiums to land condominiums to residential condominiums to traditional condominiums and townhomes. The challenge we faced was trying to “solve’ the local condo definitions and look forward to the data demands we need to assuage on a national basis when we are required to share our property data across multiple systems.

What does this mean for you?

We will be making a couple of straightforward changes on the listing input form. First, we will be restoring “Condo” as a type, and will make sure only the appropriate sub-types appear under it. Secondly, we will review the various required fields to ensure that only appropriate fields will be required for condominium listings.

This will also make searching for properties easier as you will not be required to use sub-type fields in order to separate condominiums from residential listings. However, we will retain the sub-type option for agents that want to be able to specify building types and other options.

We are currently undergoing an extensive data conversion on listings, saved searches and prospects. Anything that we are able to identify as a condominium will be converted. This is a significant undertaking. We will also address the “Old/Prev” listings in the system by bringing condominiums back as a type, agents will no longer have to include “Old/Prev” in their searches.

Our goal is to have this modification in place on or before June 30. Beyond that, we will focus our attention on improving the listing input form, as well as various formats.

As we focus on “continuous improvement” as a business model, there are occasions where the quest for that improvement results in other unexpected challenges. To that end, we appreciate all of your time, energy and effort while we have and will continue to work through the inevitable nuances that a major revision of an internet-based software platform presents.

As always, we greatly appreciate your support and feedback as we work together to create the preeminent service available within our industry for the benefit of you and most importantly, your clients.

Policy Change

Short Sale Listing Status Must be changed to “C” Or “U” upon Sellers Acceptance of Offer or When Escrow is Opened

In 2009, the Treasury Department introduced the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program that provides options to homeowners who are unable to keep their homes through the Homes Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The HAFA program became effective as of April 5, 2010 and ends on December 31, 2012. Basically through this new program borrowers may avoid foreclosure through short sales or deed-in-lieu (DIL) of foreclosure that allows them to receive pre-approved short sale terms before listing their properties (including minimum acceptable net proceeds). The lenders and lien holders who participate in the HAFA program are required to review and approve or disapprove of sales within ten (10) business days of receipt of the borrowers’ Request for Approval of Short Sale (RASS). This limits the amount of time that participating servicers may “sit” on offers accepted by the borrowers and limits the number of offers to only one (1) at a time that the servicers may consider at any given time for any particular property.

Upon reviewing the HAFA program and considering that the largest lenders are Participating Servicers, the HIS Board of Directors approved the repeal of the policy that permitted listings of properties that may be subject to short sale to remain in active status until the lender or lien holder approved of offers that have been accepted by the sellers. The change in policy will be effective July 1, 2010. As of that date, listings of short sale properties for which the sellers have accepted offers are no longer exempt from the rule that requires listings be placed in Contingent/C or Under Contract/U status or they shall be in violation of the rules of the service.

It should be noted that this rule is in place to prevent causing inconvenience to fellow members and their prospective buyer clients who may expend time, effort and expense pursuing properties listed in the service that they saw were “active” only to find out that an offer has been accepted. HIS has received calls from members and prospective buyers in the past who felt that properties were misrepresented as being available when they actually were not. Members should remember that under the “C” status (formerly “A/C or Active Contingent”), the listed properties may still be shown for the purpose of obtaining back up offers.

Please remember that the rules require that the verbiage “Potential short sale” must be written in the Private Remarks in all listings of properties that may be subject to short sale (Section 4.10) and that any disclosure about the listed properties being subject to short sale may be provided in the Public Remarks only with consent of the sellers/owners (Section 3.05a.).

Auction Listings Now Permitted

Auction listings are now formally permitted in the service. The HIS Board of Directors at their meeting held on May 19, 2010 approved Section 3.09 of the rules to be rewritten as follows.

3.09. Auction Listings. A listing broker may submit a listing of an eligible listing type that is subject to auction only if it displays a definite listing price and the circumstances under which cooperating brokers will be compensated in the event of a successful closing. The listing record for a property subject to auction must specify in the Private Remarks section of the listings record the type of auction (for example, absolute, minimum bid, or reserve).

Previously auction listings were not permitted in the service but several members expressed that there were opportunities for cooperation and compensation among brokers participating in auction sales. Since the MLS is an environment provided for the cooperation among its participating members in the sales of real estate and that there are auction sales that provide this, it was felt that auction listings should be permitted in the service.

The list prices of auction listings shall be determined by the listing brokers. HIS is not involved in the process of determining listing prices nor is it involved in the setting of commissions.

Upcoming Change

License Type Field to be added to REsearch

Our programmers are working on adding a field called “License Type” in REsearch. Right now there is a “Subscriber Type” field with numerous selections that include license type, member type, designations and certifications. In our verification with the RE Branch of DCCA as to what members are required to show in all advertising or promotional materials, we determined that another field was needed to facilitate the display of the state recognized license types after the names of the licensees. There are only a few license type descriptions that the state recognizes under the license laws and rules. These are as follows.

“B” – Licensees with broker licenses who are not also members of a local Board of REALTORS®.

“S” – Licensees with salesperson licenses who are not also members of a local Board of REALTORS®.

“R” – Licensees with brokers licenses who are also members of a local Board of REALTORS®, or a salesperson licensee who is also a member of an ALL-REALTOR® Board.

“RA”- Licensees with salesperson licenses who are also members of a local Board of REALTORS®.

The requirement to include these license types in all advertising and promotional materials may be found in the Hawaii Administrative Rules §16-99-11 (e)(3).

We understand that the Kona Board of REALTORS® and the REALTORS® of Maui are “ALL- REALTOR®” Boards. In addition to the above, on August 30, 2002, the Real Estate Commission approved that the salesperson licensees of ALL-REALTOR® Boards may also use the following license type descriptions “R(S)“, “R(salesperson)“, “Realtor(Salesperson)” or “Realtor(S)“.

We recognize that several of our members would also want to have designations such as “PB”, “BIC”, “DR” or “Designated Realtor” and certifications such as CRB, ABR, e-PRO, etc., to also appear after their names on the roster and listing displays. They can be displayed after the state recognized license type on all displays if the members select or write them in the “Subscriber Designation” field that is already available in REsearch.

We will send out notification to all members when the new License Type field will be released and available.

Administrative Note

Billing Changes Reminder

Any requests for changes or cancellations for the July 2010 billing are due by Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 2:00 p.m.

For those who would like to submit changes to their payment account information, they may click on this link to obtain the Exhibit C – Pre-Authorized Payment Agreement form. Print out a hard copy, complete it and fax it to (808) 524-6874. If the changes involve only account information, the PB, BIC or DR is not required to sign it.